Der Reisende
by Dieu
Summary: One normal girl appears in the world of FFVII during the FF:VII Before Crisis period.Since I hate fluffy stuff, this won't be particularly pretty.AVALANCHE vs. Shinra, and it's all shades of gray.No romance.Not what you think, please, give it a chance.
1. NOTE

I get tired sometimes of reading fanfiction where it goes as follows: _Self-Insert_ goes into _Host World_ and diddles around a bit until she makes out with _Hot Bishie_, who is singularly, automatically, mysteriously floored by the captivating good looks of _Self-Insert_. Life doesn't work like that. First of all, this plot of SI-visitng-HW is generally annoying as fuck to read, except in a single case I've read—which happens to be on this site, mind you. It's OCxSephiroth, and written by Aloria: **_Alternate Dimensions_**. Go read it, it kicks all kinds of ass.

Anyway, here we go. This'll take a while to explain (but still interesting) so get situated.

Everyone here generally knows about **Final Fantasy VII: Before Crisis**, it's that damned cell phone game that we can't get our hands on because our technology is years behind the Japanese. Well, actually I have some good news for you: They _are_ bringing it out here, only on cell phones—and my cell phone is archaic. I won't be able to play it! You have no idea how distressing this is for me. Cue emo music.

But, even though I have nothing (that I've found, anyway) to explain to me much about the game except for a sketch of the plot and small bios on the characters, I'm going to try. I've found out a few surprising things, and I have enough to make this interesting. Keep in mind: The game doesn't have default names for the Turk characters we're not so familiar with, but the names I've chosen won't grind your gears, and tried to keep with their personalities. I've tried really hard. But, nevertheless, I want to write this story. This leaves me with one option: Improvisation. I will work as well as I can with the information at hand.

I hate emo angst. "Whinge whinge whinge my life sucks omg they're bein mean to me." But I do love to torture characters, and make things hard on them. Why? Because life isn't a walk in the park, and it certainly wouldn't be if deposited into another dimension. There are a lot of questions that have to be answered, situations accounted for—basically, forget your nice computer and precious insulated little world of video games, fast food, school, and suburbia. Hell, forget even having a bathroom at your disposal—even those little menial things get taken away. Imagine your money is suddenly worthless.

Midgar wasn't a nice place even in the game—just look at the term 'slums.' That doesn't just refer to the buildings—it refers to the inhabitants as well. In other words, any naïve newcomer in the slums would find themselves with the seriously short end of the stick. Of course, in the game it was stylized—even Advent Children was stylized for the effect of a movie. It doesn't take into consideration the "other half"—the part of the population you're not summoning Knights of the Round with, the parts that weren't essential to the original story.

Well, my idea is to drop this said poor, unsuspecting victim (ahem Original character) of mine into the world of **FFVII: Before Crisis**. I should think the whole 'Helping save the world from Sephiroth' plot line has been done to death. Now, as far as personification: I am horrible about sympathizing with the "bad guys." So please expect all different shades of gray.

A little about me, as this is my first fanfiction dealing with this topic: I've been described as a bitter cynic and rampant bastard (well, the last two words were in jest but really were playing off of my tendencies). I love history. I have a fascination with Nazis. I'm in college. I'm studying international politics. I'm really not that mean, whatever you get from this, but I can be extremely stubborn and blunt. I hate mincing words. I can be extremely stiff to talk to, but that's generally because I have no idea what to say to people more than a lack of interest or friendliness. I hate children.

People watching is a hobby. I'm fascinated with detail and characterization.

I will tell you right now I don't do lemon, not because of any moral problems I have but because I don't believe I can write it very well. Let's just say my sex-ed was reading fanfiction—and I was quite confused on the basic mechanics for a long time, because most of the lemons I read (I was a good 10 or 11 years old) were written by people who had never had sex. I won't put myself up for that risk. Then, one day, I read a particularly good fic and I thought "Oh, so _that's_ how you do it."

That all said...I'll be working on this.

I don't own FFVII, but I do own my original characters.


	2. der Anfang

I won't promise you'll like me. Just because I said I hated Self Inserts doesn't mean I don't like writing them myself. Now read it and tell me I'm a Mary Sue. Give it a chance.

I'm going to write this story with two promises to myself: Lose those 20 pounds you've gained by the end of the semester and get the hell back into swimming. You've had your year-long break, now quit making excuses.

* * *

Anne poked irritably at the chubby pudge ringing her white-skinned waist, the incriminating flab that caused her pants to fit tighter and now prevented her from wearing some of her clothes. Little red squeeze lines betrayed the area formerly held in by the line of her jeans, but were now covered by looser pajama bottoms.

The extra weight wasn't very apparent to anyone but Anne, especially given that she was still thinner than many of the people around her, but it made a large impression on her.

Since she had quit exercising on a regular basis, she had gained a ridiculous amount of baggage. She was fat, as much as her friends tried to convince her otherwise. She disliked it, it made her face round and pudgy-looking.

"I _really_ need to exercise," she mumbled, glaring at her dimmed image in the mirror, and then squeezed the skin between her fingers, her eyes narrowing. Realizing, again, that staring at it was pointless and only made her feel worse, she turned away and went back to her desk; her dorm room was tiny, it didn't take more than a few steps and she was sitting in front of her laptop again: Her word processor was open and she was trying to work on her essay for her history class. It wasn't coming along well.

It was an open topic and one she knew fairly well: Nazis—or much more specifically Himmler, but she was terrified of saying something that would earn her a harsh academic rebuttal. She had inadvertently managed to prompt her professor into assigning her this when she had asked a rather specific question about the relationship of the SS in terms of Germany's nationalism in the Third Reich after class three days ago.

As a result she was asked to write a research paper about Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, which actually didn't disturb her on a _moral _level one bit: In fact it intrigued and excited her, to no end, because it gave her an excuse to prioritize the reading of a book on Nazi occultism and another on the SS in general.

But, she was still wrangling with the fact that she had to tell people what she was doing, and why—people tended to give very polarized reactions. Either they stared at her like she was some kind of freak and changed the subject, or laughed it off as another one of Anne's multiple eccentricities. A few would sit and listen to her, totally ambivalent and understanding of Anne's purely academic interest.

But back to the paper—she was trying to avoid it simply because she was afraid of what she might say. She was terrified of having to sit in her professor's office and listen to him tear it to pieces. There was a high chance of it; he said he would hand it to another professor—one who was an expert in, of all things—Nazis.

The thought made her blood chill to the bone, though at the time Professor Langley had given this to her she had only nodded—rather lightheaded and frozen stiff with fear of even the idea—and asked when he would like to have it in. He gave her two weeks.

So it was a double edged opportunity: She had not been able to shake the subconscious impatience to begin work on it, because of this fascination—and she had begun, obviously; Anne realized quickly that she would have to do this right the first time, and that it wouldn't stand for her usual procrastination. By by another token, there was also the subconscious guilt and shame of even having this interest in the first place, and that dragged her down.

Glancing nervously at the few typed words, she decided that no academic juices were flowing at the moment and so flicked her finger along the touch pad of her laptop, and clicked on the Firefox tab on the taskbar.

The gray-green image of DeviantART's forums appeared and she lurked absently for a few minutes, her eyes roving along the thread titles and finding nothing riveting that she hadn't already replied to.

That option exhausted, she looked through her cache of pictures, and when she quickly exhausted that option she glanced at the clock at the bottom-right of the screen: 12:06 AM.

Anne sighed: She still had Japanese and German to study before she went to sleep, since those classes were tomorrow, and she had again wasted her evening piddling around uselessly. Her GPA was going to take a back-breaking dive if she didn't get her act together.

Still, Anne was naturally intelligent: She was quite competent despite her shortcomings, efficient, and took tests extremely well. She was good at guessing what the teacher was aiming for her to get out of a lesson, but she ran into pitfalls when she had no directive and clearly stated goal. This was evident in her grade in her honors Humanities course: There was no doubt that Anne was in love with the subject, but her professor was anything but specific in terms of laying out what he wanted, and then graded ridiculously.

That she doggedly remained in that class despite the high rate of drops was testament to her rigid lack of an ability to simply throw in the towel without having been without-a-doubt backed into a corner with a gun to her head. She would not get an F for the semester—Anne was too smart for that, but she would also not get an A.

Anne decided that she would work on her Himmler paper again tomorrow night. Anne's roommate, Carrie, had already gone to sleep—that was rather early, actually, but she'd been tired.

_Fuck Japanese and German. I'll pay for it later. It's already midnight._

With an inaudible groan she realized that this was the same excuse she had used with herself two days ago and then promptly bombed her German quiz.

_Didn't I say I wasn't going to do that anymore?_

Still unwilling to set her nose to the grindstone, Anne checked the DevART forums once again and posted twice under a topic in the complaints forum, in typical style: Bitter, harsh, and generally sarcastic.

Eventually she brought herself to look through her Japanese, which was the first class of the day; she _promised_ herself she would study German before stepping foot in that classroom tomorrow.

By the time she went to bed it was 1:30 AM, with very little done. This was normal, and on her way to the bathroom to brush her teeth, she talked with a friend of hers who was studying for an Arabic test the next morning.

"Good luck," Anne said, as she went back into her dorm room, shut down her laptop, and crawled under her covers, putting her cell phone next to her head on the pillow, as a second alarm clock; Anne didn't always wake up for the clock that sat beside her lofted¹ bed on top of the shelves.

* * *

(¹) Lofted Bed: A bed that's been lifted up like a bunk bed without a second bed beneath it; in Anne's dorm room case it's up against the wall, and the head of the bed is against the far wall, along the same side of the room, next to the bed are shelves, on top of which things like Anne's lamp, her clock, and the books which she couldn't fit on her shelves go. If this isn't clear enough, I'll draw a picture.

Boring? Is she too Mary Sue-y? It's only the first chapter, so give it a little time. I'd really love to hear your thoughts on this...?

Okay, to clear stuff up: Anne is in college, she lives in a dorm. She _is_ taking two different languages at the same time. Any more questions?

Like I said, I don't know what impressions you may have gotten, this fic will get pretty dark and twisted. Just wait for it...


	3. der Traum

I actually talk to my roommate _far_ more than this fanfiction lets on. Oh, well. She and I are friends, it's simply more convenient for the sake of expediency to cut interaction to a mere minimum.

All that said...you'd better read this. I promise you it's worth your time. Just manage to get through the first bits. I add in interesting history, too—the stuff high school never told you. Lots of 'and this person got killed by shoving a red-hot poker up his ass...' Considering that I didn't make that up at all, that should give you an idea.

* * *

Anne was aware of a keening, digging sound in her ears before she reluctantly surfaced from where she lay nestled in a deep sleep. She opened her eyes, staring at the fuzzy outline of her hand, curled slightly in a state of total limpness. Between the bent digits she could read the large, blue digital clock even without her glasses: 4:52 AM. Other than the faint yellow light coming in through the slats of the Venetian blinds on the window, it was quite opaquely dark.

"_Fuck_...!" she mumbled, though it barely came out as coherent. Anne's roommate on the other side of the room (she didn't have a loft) groaned as she, too, was jarred rudely from her sleep.

"What the hell's goin' on?" Carrie mumbled, and her voice was slurred heavily.

"I d'know," Anne replied, as the two roused themselves reluctantly, responding to the message that followed a triple shriek of the fire alarm: _"Attention Andrews Hall Residence. An emergency has been reported, please move to the nearest exit."_ And then another three beeps, all loud and painful to sensitive, sleepy ears.

"It's four thirty in the morning!" Carrie complained, and Anne was inclined to agree with the aggravation in Carrie's tone.

Anne pulled on her robe but let it hang on her shoulders; she opened their dorm door and blinked in the light of the hall.

It didn't _smell_ like fire. What was the emergency? Anne moved out of the way so Carrie could get by. They stood, rather dazed, by their door jamb. Every now and then a hall mate would walk by. Their rationale was rather lemming-like: They didn't want to go until other people went.

"Hey, what's going on?" Alison, the friend who Anne had wished good luck upon for her Arabic test, walking up to them from down the hall.

"No idea," Anne shrugged.

Some ingrained social obedience in Anne told her that perhaps she ought to do as the alarm said—out in the hall it was much louder and it made her wince—but then again, this wouldn't be the first time that an alarm had gone off for no good reason The alarms were ridiculously sensitive and could be tripped by something so mundane as potpourri or air freshener.

Earlier last semester, there had been three consecutive alarms, each set off by someone's liquid air freshener, and with that in mind the jaded trio of students were unwilling to go outside if there wasn't a real, ascertainable emergency to warrant it. They had all been quite close to midnight, and to say the least it was annoying.

They talked for a while and were eventually joined by another friend, Ellen (it was determined when no RA's came by demanding that they evacuate that this was another false alarm), but after a few more minutes the fact that it _was_ almost 5:45 AM caught up with them and they decided that they might just try to go back to bed, despite the noise.

Anne and Carrie exchanged another round of "good night's" and then crawled back into bed.

"I'm going to _kill_ those damned Chi O's,"¹ Anne muttered, because that was what had been determined: That it _was_ a false alarm, and that it had been triggered by a Chi O party.²

Neither of them questioned the logic (or rather, lack of, because logic had nothing to do with it) of having a party on a weeknight, much less at 4:30 AM, but after a minute or so the repetitive screeching stopped, and they went back to sleep.

* * *

The day was over, finally. Her legs shook as she stood upon them, her fingers trembled when she lifted them, her left arm ached from the six pages of handwritten essay she turned in for her humanities test. She leaned against the steel pole of her lofted bed for a moment, simply taking it in that she could finally relax. Her book bag dropped to the ground with a solid thud, and she nearly threw herself into her chair. The laptop was turned on before she sat back.

Perhaps she hadn't had her Humanities class that day, but that didn't prevent her professor from assigning a due date.

At any rate, she was wound up and needed an escape. She decided to work on her essay.

When Anne talked about Nazis it made some people very nervous; once prodded into speaking she was unapologetic—she didn't add the usual subtle inflections of making a point to say she disliked Nazis, and instead it was simply blunt facts.

This tended to be a problem as people picked up on Anne's less-than-sober mannerisms while talking about a subject that interested her, and the conspicuous lack of deferential overtures, and, in some cases simply assumed she was a Nazi—or, at least, a Nazi sympathizer.

If anything, Anne simply resented the mystique that had grown up around the Nazis and didn't like making excuses. In terms of sheer numbers killed—well, the Nazis had _nothing_ on Stalin. In terms of their point of view on Jews—Hitler wasn't original. Pogroms were enough to prove that point—the Nazis were hardly the first to kill Jews in significant numbers.

Perhaps the part that was most intriguing about the Nazis was the one many people found themselves surprised to learn: The very close connection between occultism and the SS—and consequently the subtleties of the Third Reich. The seeming double S at the throat of every SS man wasn't a cool font—it was a Nordic sig, or sigel, rune (well, the fact itself that it was a rune was hardly uncommon knowledge), chosen for its meaning. On the SS honor ring were additional runes, the hagal one of them, along with the tilted swastika—and she'd forgotten the others.

It was interesting how this seemed to be so unnoticed.

Anne was trying to avoid going into very much detail with this subject, despite her deep interest, because she didn't want to stick her head on the chopping block.

With an irritated flourish, she sat back and stared at her ceiling.

_He asked me to do this, right? This isn't even something I'm getting graded on. I'm sure he doesn't just want me to regurgitate information...but..._

She stood up and walked out of her room, and went and got a drink at the water fountain down the hall. This was an almost torturous assignment. Vaguely, she realized that she was prioritizing this paper almost too much over her other classes.

_Should I take the dive and write this the way I want to write it? All he said was 'write about what you think is interesting.' He didn't even say _how_ he wanted this written—well, he wouldn't tell me._

Anne knew what she wanted to do—but the reluctance to fully pursue, with any enthusiastic interest, knowledge about Nazis, was all but ingrained and hardwired into her being. She was, without a doubt, capable of keeping her head above intellectual waters. But, however, she was_ in_capable of turning her back on a lifetime of being told to shun all things Nazi.

She went back to her dorm room—where else?--and sat down again.

Carrie was out at a meeting, and would probably be back within the hour.

Anne scratched lazily at an inflamed zit—she got acne when she became stressed—and stared at the screen with a blank expression.

_You're going to write it like you _want_ to, aren't you?_

There was practically no way to write an essay about Himmler and _not_ mention his interest in the occult. Well, in terms of making it interesting to Anne, at any rate.

With a wry grin, Anne made up her mind—if she got academically reamed...well, she would at least have fun in the meantime. The thought made her cringe with real fear, but she could do worse.

With that decided, a certain nervous unrest in Anne had somewhat settled, and she felt much more comfortable.

"If I'm going to do this," she murmured to herself, "Then I'm damn well going to make sure that what I say is _right_."

"_Well it's full speed baby, in the wrong direction, there's a few more bruises, if that's the way...you insist on heading...please be honest Mary Jane...are you happy? Please, don't censor your tears..."_

Anne paused for a moment, staring at the iTunes label on her monitor's task bar, then rolled her eyes and decided she'd had quite enough Alanis Morisette for one night. She was a good singer, but her warbling voice could get annoying after a while.

* * *

The next morning, waking to a clock that was set 20 minutes ahead of time in order to trick herself into getting up just that much earlier, Anne glared malevolently at the shining blue digital numbers, and slid out of bed, shimmying unsteadily down from the lofted bed, and grabbing her robe, a towel, her shampoo and basket of shower necessities, which included a razor, shaving cream, and face wash.

There was a big red sore at her chin where she wouldn't stop picking last night, and she told herself absently—in this state, there was no chance that she would remember any longer than perhaps ten minutes—she should cut her nails before she picked it all the way into impetigo again.

She shuffled half-asleep into the bathroom, where she jerked the first curtain closed for privacy, tossed her robe and towel over the bar, and shed her pajamas. She turned on the water.

Naked, she stepped into the shower and began to shave her underarms—she didn't always have the patience or the time to shave her legs—and then shampoo her hair. Of all parts of her body, Anne's hair was her favorite. It hung down in one straight, continuous fall of shiny blond to her waist—except for longish bangs that hung to her chin. She was still growing it out.

Then she washed her face.

A few minutes later—after basking in the warmth of the hot shower—Anne stepped out and dried off, and put on her robe. She walked into the bathroom and peed, and then went back to her dorm.

Carrie was still asleep, so Anne went about getting dressed as quietly as she could, dried her hair in the bathroom, and walked up the hill with her heavy bag over her shoulder.

* * *

(¹) Chi O: Short for Chi Omega, a sorority. Pronounced: "kai-oh"

(²) How many of you out there think I'm kidding or making up a word about any of the stuff about the alarms or the party? Well, if you do think that, consider this your first lesson in the school of "Truth is stranger than fiction." Because it all did happen.

I might add that parties so late at night are anything but odd. They're quite normal, actually. You'll notice that Anne and Carrie are only miffed at having been woken up.

It's a little jumpy right now, but it'll delineate pretty quick. She's not just going around like some random crazy person, there is a point.


	4. An Itty Bitty Importante Notiz

Don't patronize me, cheecheepet. I'm not going to "freak" on you—or perhaps I _will_ just a bit because of your high-handed tone of writing. I want you to get to know the character before anything happens. It might seem boring to you, but to most people it would be called "development." A theme? No, and that's a terrible word to use. Please don't try to sound like you're all that and a bag of chips. And neither am I setting up a tone, no. The story hasn't even begun, yet. Perhaps I want to set up the dividing line between "easy, happy life" and "slums." In as few words as possible: Please fuck off until you have the balls to leave an email. Until then you're incapable of owning up to your own words and therefore are not to be taken seriously. Had you left an email I wouldn't be miffed and would most likely have emailed you, asking in what ways it was boring and etc. I've gotten worse reviews than what you've said—but they've all been people who don't hide behind the anonymous review feature. They've helped me in the past. "Just hurry up in to FF." Well, you can hurry up and _wait_, dear. I really don't care if it costs me your interest or reviews. That's _not_ what I write for. Chalk it up to my little problem with pop writing.

What? Did you think I was _kidding_ when I said I was a rampant bastard? Or did you fail to read the notes? They're rather important, so if they don't hold your spastic attention, that's not my fault.

Tell me when I fuck up, just don't be an ass and hide when you do.

۞

That said, to everyone else who might give a shit, I won't be updating for a while because of finals. Eh. I really need to study some German and Japanese, or else I'm going to get reamed. Plus I need to write those papers, study for that stupid test, and a plethora of other things...

College is fun but it's a hell of a lot of work. #laughs#


End file.
